


Odd Days Out

by Etnoe



Category: Eight Days of Luke - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not always interesting to be a god among mortals, but mortals are not without their surprises. Luke experiences a few days of the ordinary and the promisingly odd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd Days Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eirenical (chibi1723)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi1723/gifts).



Astrid was up to something.

There would be fire.

Of these two things Luke was sure, and he thought that they might be related. They were all having a peaceful, ordinary day otherwise, making idle conversation and David and Astrid preparing for the coming week, and the tantalising premonitions kept returning to the forefront of his mind. He stared dreamily over the kitchen counter to where she sat in the living room and flipped through a magazine.

"Oh dear," David said, and Luke blinked out of his dreaminess and returned to the certainties of now. David was finished with their sandwiches and had for once remembered to start wiping away the crumbs before he got scolded. He spoke in a low voice. "Do you want to go for a drive or something? I hope you do. That would be hard enough to convince Astrid of, but by the look on your face you're thinking of something involving even more trouble."

"I would enjoy a drive," Luke said brightly. "Where haven't we been?"

David smiled. "Lots of places, of course. Though I suppose that still doesn't answer the question of what you were mooning over." He looked a little fearful to question more closely, and sighed and gave Luke the plate with his sandwich. Luke bit into it immediately. It was good cheese and soft bread, and a generous smear of mustard. David, Astrid, and Alan often tried to give him foods that were hot to taste even when they weren't hot to touch, like a kind of offering. He'd learned to savour the sensation. Now he also made the best of the fact that as a young man and in this company, no one was going to blame him too much for cramming the food down as messily as he felt like. 

"Where did you put the maps, again? We'll look for somewhere really good." Luke cast his eyes around the two rooms he could easily see. 

"Nobody's going for a drive. The dog is hunting an awful lot of things in his sleep, so you lot are taking him for a walk," Astrid said, as if they were a band of boys. 

David sighed in annoyance. "There are only two of us!" He tended to react that way when Astrid said things like that. Luke thought that he might not like the idea that he was enough trouble to count as a crowd. It probably had a lot more to do with Luke being around, and he felt it was complimentary. 

The argument was stopped by Ferris giving a high yip, a sound so puppyish it could make Luke laugh. He stood up from his favoured warm spot in the middle of the carpet and stretched to get rid of the last of his doze. The rangy puppy had started hanging around in the area of the flat some months ago and then cosied up with Luke, and by extension David. Neither David nor Astrid had been particularly surprised by that and had welcomed him politely, and Ferris could keep his jaws small and milk-toothed for a surprisingly long time in their company even when Luke was not visiting too. 

Ferris went to the door and stood there, looking at them all in turn as he waited. "All right, we're coming," Luke told him, and ate the last of his sandwich. David fetched his keys as he stuffed his own into his cheeks. 

"Pferhops I sould sfay," David mumbled, looking thoughtful, and then swallowed. "Perhaps I should say there are three of us, actually. And that we are all going for a walk together, rather than anyone taking anyone else.

"Ferris doesn't care," Luke and Astrid said together. Astrid gave him a little smile for the coincidence and continued, "He really doesn't. As long as he gets to do what he feels like, I've found, he's happy." 

Luke nodded. "He doesn't mind much how you speak of him if you really know who he is. You might make sure Alan's sisters know to treat him well before they try to tie something to his tail, perhaps, but you shouldn't have much to worry about." The pup began to pace, his unwieldy legs going in unexpected directions on the smooth floor tiles. "For right now, though, Astrid's right - he would be much happier on a walk." Luke went to him, dragging fingertips through the ridge of fur at his neck. Ferris went still for it. 

"Don't be too long, you two-or-three," Astrid said. "By which I suppose I mean David, as you're the only one I can say that to. I know it's weekend, but I feel I've seen hardly hide or hair of you lately." 

"All right, I won't go off the beaten path." He jostled Luke as if to say Luke would drag him off anyway. Luke elbowed him back for making the idea a little more difficult to resist. And Astrid watched them more closely than she usually did. She still held her magazine up to read from, but it looked as if she'd forgotten it was still in her hands. 

When they said their goodbyes as they left, Astrid was back to normal, and gave her customary goodbye of asking David to buy cigarettes while he was out anyway. It was something Luke could have guessed she would say. He could have guessed half the conversation they'd just had without the least bit of premonition. It had really been a very ordinary day, without anything unusual that needed talking about, and more than that, all his visits with his closest mortal friends had been quiet lately. 

He had not been with them much in the past few seasons, either. Ferris had come to liberty, and so of course Luke had sought him out and looked for ways to help him stay free and safe. In between those tasks, he sometimes thought of visiting them when David had not called him with a flame - which also happened less often, content as he'd become with his life - and the idea of the order of their mortal existence, seemed unbearable. There were rarer days when sharing their peace was all he wanted, but it was a strange thing for him to want and he had not grown used to it despite after years of renewed freedom. Even then he had other names and titles than Luke, and could not turn the majority of him into such a young man's form. 

Now that the possibility was strong that something odd and interesting was going to happen, here, as Luke... 

"I'd like to come for supper," Luke said on the way to the park, him leading the way in order to avoid tedious people who would wish to know why Ferris wasn't on a leash and were unsympathetic to the fact that he disdained and then ate them. 

"Oh, good," said David, grinning at him in pleasure. Luke grinned back. "You haven't stayed in a while, and there ought to be enough for three. Three humans, I mean. 

Normally Luke had to hope that Astrid and David wouldn't be awfully surprised when he brought trouble to them again, and was grateful that they remained as accepting as they'd been when he first came to know them. He couldn't resist the thought that now one of them would contribute their own unquiet to the household. 

* 

As Astrid stepped out of her bedroom, a newly lit cigarette in her hand, Luke said, "It so happens that David went in one direction to buy your cigarettes," and grinned as she jumped a little. "I came back here to say that I'd invited myself to supper, and also to look for those maps we were talking about earlier." 

He beamed where he sat on the settee, leaning back and making no movement to get up and look for anything. 

"You aren't entirely irresistible, Luke, you should know," she told him, smiling back a little reluctantly. She'd been startled to see someone in the flat - but she had, after all, just struck a flame. 

"I thought David had to be around for this to count as calling you," she said, waving the cigarette. 

"That's what I promised him. But I know you, so it's easy to find you when you light a flame." 

She looked at the orange tip of the cigarette with almost as much intensity as she'd given him and David earlier. Anticipation made him get to his feet, needing to move. "Would you like help setting the table?" 

" _Not_ irresistible," she reminded him. "But yes, please do that." 

She brought the food to the table, stew, salad, and rice, and then went to pick up her cigarette again. She watched him as he set down the glasses and then said, "Me or David?" 

"Be more gracious than me, Astrid," he said, cajoling. "Don't hint around the subject, please? There is something going on, isn't there?" He tried to sound helpful. He would help, of course, if they had any need. Right now he mostly wanted to know what was going on. 

She grinned at him. It was a welcoming gesture that invited him to share a secret, or make a promise, or laugh together. Astrid was a welcoming person, though she'd be skeptical to hear it. "All right then. I suppose I'm glad you seem to have picked up I need to speak to you without David around." She grew serious. "If one of us two mortals were to have power - power of your kind - which of us do you think it should be? 

"David, you'll say," Astrid told him before he had a chance to speak. "He's told me how you and he came to be friends. And take those maps you're supposed to be looking for, for example. They're on the top of the bookshelf, by the way." 

Luke went to fetch them and laid them open on the kitchen counter - it would help to avoid David becoming suspicious. Astrid kept speaking: "I know David can do the same as you now, and find places on those maps that no one ever drew on them and probably shouldn't exist." 

"He finds more interesting places than I do, actually, as he can also draw people and objects onto the map. But he can only do any of that when I'm around," Luke said. "It probably helps that Ferris and Thor visit here a lot, too." 

"I don't know who you think you're fooling with the name Ferris, by the way," Astrid said, and he acknowledged her point with a smile. 

"A bit of a change in name really does help. He wouldn't be Ferris Pup if he weren't called Ferris Pup." 

"And you're our Luke," she said. "You're certainly not going away, you or the dog." 

"No." Luke shook his head instantly. The words 'our Luke' were startling and not quite something he would have expected from her rather than David, but he was happy to accept them. Then he made himself clear. "Well, Ferris might stay away, or I could ask him not to show up here anymore. But I will always come when David asks it, and for more visits besides." 

He hadn't thought the dog would bother her, especially given how well she'd taken the realisation years ago of Luke's true name and with it, the whole of his nature. He hadn't _wanted_ them to trouble her, and she had never cared to be troubled in that way. If she did fight the truths of it - Ferris Pup's existence, and the shadow he carried of Fenrir Wolf - it wouldn't make much of a difference to Ferris. But Astrid would be afraid for a long time before it could simply be a truth again that she knew a wolfhound puppy and a monster of a wolf, and hardly any other human could say the same. And that she knew a boy and a god, too. 

"So can I learn the same kind of thing that David can do already?" Astrid asked. "Even knowing the rules alone would help, like this thing about names." She sucked in cigarette smoke as if to distract herself, but shallowly because the distraction didn't take. Her eyes blazed. "I need to, you see. We need a real understanding of the world we're living in. But I can't be like I used to be with David, when we lived with the rest of his family. We made use of him, and it was awful. Learning magic would be for his own protection too, but he might take it badly if I asked him to study it properly. I might be as awful about it as before! So could I be the one to learn instead of him?" 

She still wasn't afraid, luckily. David was sometimes far more nervous around him and at the thought if things he might do than Astrid was now. He just hadn't expected her to become wary now, after years of knowing him. Then again, it wasn't too strange, after years of merely accepting something, for her to try and take an active role. Maybe this was why he liked Astrid, a mortal as ordinary as many others. Not only for caring for David in so many ways, and for being clever and hardworking, but for the possibilities that she opened up as she insisted in opening them for herself. 

He wouldn't say anything of the fire that might follow her plan. He'd be careful with it when it came, for David and Astrid's sakes, but they both knew his name. They knew what they could expect, and he found that possibility such a beautiful one. 

"Of course," he told her. She reached over the kitchen table to clasp his hands and he returned the grip. It reminded him oddly of what warriors might do and he laughed a little. "Power, power, we'll have to get you power..." 

David came in a few minutes later to find them poring over the maps in earnest. Astrid thought it sounded all right to get a token of some kind - a stone, a ring, a vial of water - to provide her with magic, which seemed the speedier option, rather than apprenticing her or sending her on a true quest. 

"Are we going on a Sunday drive instead, then?" David asked, looking cheered by the prospect. 

"Not tomorrow, next Sunday. Perhaps the Sunday after that," Astrid told him, then ruffled his and Luke's hair. They ducked away, grimacing. "Luke's convinced me of the absolute need to get out of town, but as I keep telling him, he's not so charming as to be totally irresistible. Now, how much do I owe you again for the cigs? 

* 

"All right, what's going on?" David asked some days later, shortly after waking up. Luke had been visiting enough that he slept over more often than not. He still preferred to share a bed with David, and it was funny how David would squint and try to puzzle out how he could still curl up comfortably at the end of the bed, staring at Luke for longer than he usually would. It was Wednesday, a school day, though, and he wasn't going to stay there much longer.

Luke grinned up at him, and David shook his head instead if smiling back. "You and Astrid are always talking. You've probably said as much to her in the past week than in all the time you've known her."

"Why not ask Astrid?"

"You're right here," he said with a haphazard pat, as if to prove it beyond a doubt. He was still a bit hazy with sleep. "And you both keep asking me to do the trick with the maps, too, but without us actually going anywhere in the end."

"We're making plans." He looked up at David and the floppy dark hair falling in front of his eyes, and the frown pulling his eyebrows together, and it occurred to him that he never wondered why he liked David as he sometimes had with Astrid. There was no question of not helping him. "She wants to protect you. So of course I'm helping."

He told David the whole story of Astrid's proposal and what plans they'd made and training they'd completed, climbing up the bed to lie on David's pillow and talk in comfort. David sat back against the wall and the other half of the pillow, and Luke put an arm around his waist. It so rarely bothered David how much Luke pushed further into his life. After so much time as Luke, it felt like the best possible thing he could do on short notice.

"It is rather difficult to get the right kind if token, and I'm trying to wear Astrid down on making a choice. The more we go over the choices, the more worried she gets about offending someone by taking an object that might belong to them. Some people will think their claim on an object so obvious that they can drop it in the wilderness and no one will dare to pick it up."

"But you'll say 'finders keepers' and everything will be all right?" David said, and then admitted, "It does sound stupid to leave something powerful lying around that way. It sounds like a storybook trap, where a witch wants travelers to prove their worth by not doing the obvious, bad thing, like stealing a ring that happens to be on the ground."

Luke squinted at him, wondering at the things that had been recorded in stories. "It can be a test like that. Or sometimes the person with the object of power is an elemental, and it makes sense to them to keep the object in their element... But I don't think that's the important part."

"Well, _I_ think it's bloody important to hear what Astrid thinks she's doing."

"Protecting you," Luke said again. "David, isn't it so much better than when we met? She worried about being a better guardian, and not one like she was before. She wants to take care of you as well as she can."

David didn't look happy when he thought about. He only let out a long sigh. Leaning against Luke, he said, "I suppose I knew that already. When you say it like that, though ... It's a relief, even though I wouldn't have expected Astrid to go back to being awful. But it's good to know she's trying."

Finally he smiled back at Luke. Sometimes exchanging smiles and looks felt like their own little language, even without a back to do it behind. "And to know you're helping me still, just like you did back then."

It felt as if there were no more debts between them, and only this warmth. A debt as enormous as the one he owed David could not truly be treated that way, but David had always wanted a friend more than anything, and it was a rather excellent trick to fool someone by giving them what they truly wanted. And what Luke wanted, too.


End file.
